Saturday, May 25, 2013

Organizing a Successful Trade Show With Event Registration Software


Trade shows are complex events organized on a relatively large scale. Many exhibitors mostly from a particular industry and its related sectors actively participate in a trade show and attend the multiple sub events that are hosted simultaneously within the main event. The visitor profiles also vary greatly at such occasions. While some events mainly draw sales and marketing professionals, there are segments that are essentially thronged by people from the Research and Development fields too. Top honchos also make frequent appearances at these shows to keep a tab on the latest industry happenings. To organize such multi-dimensional events it is imperative for the event organizers to take the help of the advanced event registration solutions.

Trade show registration and payment management:

The planning procedure for organizing a trade show starts months ahead or sometimes even a year in advance. A lot of ground work is needed to host such an event successfully. Professional planners who are assigned to organize a trade show deem is necessary to come up with an entire website dedicated solely to the event. They create multiple online event registration forms for various conferences, seminars, discussion sessions, product launch parties, and dinners; details of these sub events are published on the website. On availing the Cloud based event registration and payment software, creating such forms becomes faster and easier as it comprises of easy-to-customize, pre-built templates of forms.

Industry insiders who are mostly well aware of the timing of announcement of such trade shows visit the particular website, and sign up for the event/events they are interested in as soon registrations is open to them. With the forms being available on the internet 24/7, they can register at any time, any part of the world. They can also make payment via multiple online payment gateways that are supported by the event management solution. Trade show organizers can track payments made online in real-time using the software. The important attendee data is securely stored in a centralized database such as Salesforce CRM that comes integrated with the event registration solution.

Once the trade show or any of its sub event/events is/are sold out, waitlists are made available on the website to let prospective visitors sign up for other sub events or similar events that are in the pipeline. Many of these waitlisted registrants are accommodated later on as and when there are cancellations. Communication and collaborations in all these cases are done effectively by using the bulk email messaging engine of the event management solution. Online promotion of the fair is also taken care of by the software application using the social media connector.

Onsite registration in a trade show

Onsite management is crucial for organizing a trade show. To regulate onsite registrations, several self registration kiosks are set up at various points in the trade show venue. Staff members are equipped with advanced technology solutions to help delegates check-in, in a hassle-free manner. The attendees are allowed to sign up for the event and pay via credit cards on the spot.

The delegates are mostly provided with the bar coded name badges. They either bring the printed copies of the badges to swipe them for easy check-in at the venue, or get them printed on site. The staff members who are equipped with Smartphones or iPods have the "Check-n Service" or "Lead Retrieval Service" incorporated within their mobile devices. Instead of using expensive third party scanning devices they simply use these systems to collect attendee information. All these services and much more help in a great way to make a trade show immensely successful.

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